


Show Me How You

by smokesprite



Category: All For The Game - Nora Sakavic
Genre: Burlesque meets a horror movie, Neil is a ghost haunting a burlesque lounge, and....he longs for the stage, kind of
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-02-15
Updated: 2018-02-15
Packaged: 2019-03-18 19:12:33
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,825
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13688007
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/smokesprite/pseuds/smokesprite
Summary: "They thought they would stop the show; they thought they could cut the act, but Neil had been sulking around too long now to not know where all the necessary equipment was. He was a ghost, and he would do the ghost dance, goddammit."Neil is a ghost with a house to haunt, but the Moxie Foxy Burlesque Troupe refuses to be chased off. If you can't beat em...join em.





	Show Me How You

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Foxandraven](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Foxandraven/gifts).



> Happy Valentines Day Drararararian!! Have a mix of three things you love--AFTG, Burlesque, and ghosts. Hope you like it! (This was a mad dash, so I might edit later, but yeeee!!!)

He didn’t know whether to be appalled or enthralled. In theory, the spectacle in front of him was a mockery. In reality, if he’d still had a heart, it would be racing.

This was the one time Neil could be glad he hadn’t managed to scare off a tenant.

As the sheet came off in a last luxurious pull, Matt struck a pose, winking, his glitter coated eyelashes sparkling in the stage lights. An audience member hooted, another wolf whistled, and with a friendly grin Matt departed the stage.

_The Halloween Spectre Spectacular_ was as riveting as promised. Neil had known it would be, of course. He’d watched all the rehearsals, stitched seams, and hovered at Wymack’s shoulder while the older man crunched numbers. They were in a lot of debt—and shows were barely breaking even. Not to mention Riko, who’d had their last venue vandalized so badly it had driven The Moxie Foxy burlesque troupe _here_.

Neil watched the stage band, the Vixens, switch around. He knew which set came next—Allison’s Loch Ness dance, clad in a slinky mermaid dress and rhinestone pasties—and felt himself materialize near the bar.

Then he took one look at the bar tender and dematerialized again.

Neil had forgotten at least a hundred times: he didn’t drink.

 

-0-

 

He hadn’t understood who they were at first. He never took the time to learn about the people who bought the house, one after another after another. To him, they were all just noisy, invasive humans. It wasn’t until he couldn’t scare them off, until he realized how desperate they were, that he really started _looking_.

They’d been bustling about at all hours for the past week, and they still were--all except Kevin, a tall, sad man, who had to be forced into taking breaks. He spent his 15 minutes of banishment on the balcony, watching one of the short men smoke. He was a bedazzled giant next to the tiny bartender. The two hardly spoke, just leaned against the rail as Kevin adjusted his fishnets. The short man was giving the ground two stories below a hard stare, occasionally blowing smoke to the sky.

The fire escape had been tacked onto the side of the house when the house had been, briefly, split up into several apartments. Neil lounged on the steps, hoping one would walk down and trip, but it seemed they’d finally learned that lesson.

“Kevin! Stage rehearsal in five. Andrew, the bar is a mess, bottles go in the fridge not your liver!” The gruff man who’d bought the house barked, recalling Kevin from his exile. Neil had been about to push one of them off the balcony, but as he followed inside his attention was caught by another man laboring over a mess of wires and, erratic droning coming from a pair of speakers.

A sound system. He could work with this. Neil reached out, “Leave,” he said, letting the electricity translate his voice.

The man looked up, “What?”

“You about finished, Seth?” Kevin demanded.

“Shut up,” Seth snapped one last chord into place, and the droning turned into music.

Neil was interested enough, just enough, that he stepped back to watch.

 

-0-

 

They charged people entry.

He resented them for that--this was _his_ home. He grudgingly let them stay, and they went and filled the ground floor.

But after that first show he’d hardly cared. _Physical form_ , was all he could think. He’d been holding the thought back all week, watching with detached curiosity, but the rehearsals were nothing compared to the real show. He could hold a corporeal form long enough to do that. He _wanted_ to do that.

Neil concentrated. He’d had a body once before, as a child, it couldn’t be too difficult to call back. But no, there were no children here, he would need to blend in. He felt himself solidifying, giving himself more of an image, and wreathed himself in clothes a darker black then the bartender’s but the same cut.

He walked towards the stage. Then he realized legs were hard and just floated towards the stage in a trance until he felt a hand grab the back of his neck.

“That’s as far as you go.”

Neil turned to find the bartender. Andrew.

“I want to dance,” Neil found the words after a moment of intense eye contact where he’d tried to convey the same.

“You can’t,” Andrew said.

“I could,” Neil promised.

“No. You can’t,” Andrew’s hold on his neck tightened, and the man began to direct him away.

“I want to dance,” Neil repeated, fighting the urge to dematerialize.

“I will throw you out.”

“You can’t,” Neil said.

“Then shut up,” The man left him at a seat at the bar.

Neil slumped, and watched the stage with despairing greed.

He _wanted_ that.

 

-0-

 

“What, do you live here now?” Roland had asked on the fifth night.

“I’ve always lived here.”

Roland snorted, “How much has this guy had, Andrew?”

Andrew was shooting Neil a look. What Andrew’s looks said, Neil never quite knew, but it said something that Andrew was looking at him.

“Nothing.”

“Oh, haha,” Roland didn’t sound particularly amused. “You’re just a natural crazy.”

“I’m a ghost.”

 

-0-

 

“They say this place is haunted,” Dan had written into her gimmicky speech.

They’d thought to play on the urban legends about the house—about the Mafia boss and the murdered son. Renee had suggested that be cut when one too many bulbs had burst.

 

-0-

 

Dan went into labor earlier than expected.

_The Halloween Spectre Spectacular_ was supposed to go on all week but with Matt gone on paternity leave and their stage manager recovering from the throes of birth, there was talk of cutting the ghost bit.

“Who puts on a Halloween show with no ghosts?” Seth, the sound technician, said.

“You wanna fill in?” Nicky asked.

Seth made a face but before he could respond Allison quipped, “Just send Andrew across the stage. We’ll call it a zombie special.”

“Allison,” Renee chided.

“You’d make a good ghost, Renee,” Allison was speculative.

“I’m a bouncer.” Renee reminded her.

“And Kevin’s already doing too many,” Wymack said.

“Am not,” Kevin protested. “I can do it.”

“We’re just going to have to cut the ghost set.”

And that ended that.

 

-0-

 

That didn’t end that. They thought they would stop the show; they thought they could cut the act, but Neil had been sulking around too long now to not know where all the necessary equipment was. He was a ghost, and he would do the ghost dance, goddammit.

Neil had managed to keep them out of the attic, his private haven, this long.

But he hadn’t. Not really.

Like everything, it had been touched by them.

Neil hardly paid mind to the dust. Instead, he’d lit lanterns and tied flashlights and had made his own stage in no time. Digging through the rotting armoire revealed musty clothes, and Neil used Dan’s supplies to craft himself a costume. He’d shredded a dark purple skirt into something that looked like one of Allison’s old costumes, made do with knee high stockings, and after deliberating decided to keep the whole suit jacket. Although, after a couple of twirls, he’d cropped it to waist length like Roland’s shirts and had liked it a lot better.

He dug through leftover jewelry, but none of it glittered like he’d thought it would.

It grew old quickly—he wanted the real thing.

He knew all the moves. And he knew where Matt’s costume was. And once he had put it on, it was hard not to envision himself on the stage. And once he was on the stage, it was hard not to turn on the lights, and the music, and once he had done that it was impossible not to envision himself preforming live.

The door opened, letting daylight into his crypt, and Neil dropped the costume. Not burned, as Nicky and Kevin acted out in the vampire/ hunter bit, but similar. Andrew, Kevin, and Wymack walked in to an empty light and sound show.

“This is why your electricity bill is so damn high,” Andrew said, unfazed.

Wymack grumbled in a Wymack fashion and Kevin made a beeline for the dressing room.

_Stage right?_ Neil wondered. Perhaps. But tonight, it would be different.

Seth was, as far as Neil could tell, competent.

But he couldn’t watch all the equipment at once.

 

-0-

 

It was glorious, and then it was over. Truthfully, he didn’t remember most of it, and he disappeared, unable to hold a form until the next Tuesday.

“Wymack’s pissed,” Andrew told him, sounding a little pissed himself. Neil shrugged and kept his seat at the bar.

“Where the hell did you come from?” Wymack demanded when he realized Neil was back.

Neil shrugged. But when Wymack didn’t say anything else he added, “The Shadows.”

“Okay, mystery boy. Don’t crash my stage again. Renee!”

Neil cocked his head. “The stage was empty.”

“Doesn’t mean you get to fill it.”

“When do I get to fill it?” Neil asked.

“Never.”

“Never?” The color washed out of Neil, and he felt himself fade for a minute. “Why?”

Wymack blinked hard at him, then shook his head. “Because you don’t work here.”

_But I let you stay._

“Can I work here?” Neil asked.

Wymack shook his head. Neil felt the floor boards start to warp underneath him. In a moment, the floor would open up to swallow everyone and that would show them—

“We’re holding tryouts,” Nicky interrupted, “One of our dancers is on paternity leave. What? He was good.”

“You can audition,” Wymack sounded like a freight train being pushed an inch it didn’t want to make—grinding, a shift of balance away from crushing someone. “No promises.”

 

-0-

 

Neil didn’t think he should have to audition, it was technically _his_ show since it was _his_ house, but he went along with it. From the shadows he observed several other auditions, unimpressed.

Roland and Nicky had turned out and been fairly supportive of all the other acts, so far, along with an exhausted looking Dan. The only other dancer who had turned out was, surprisingly, Andrew, and as the first chords of a jazz record began to play from Neil’s gramophone he almost looked like he was paying attention.

Neil was a good judge of people’s moods, and Wymack did not look happy. Dan, at least, looked a little intrigued. Nicky’s hoots and hollers were a staple of all auditions. Andrew was blank.

Neil concentrated on holding the form, on letting gravity have its say for long enough to look like he was a person. And then the dance was over, and although Neil wouldn’t have been able to fake it much longer, he felt like he had failed. He was tempted to ask for another go, but support came from an unexpected quadrant.

“I like him,” Kevin said.

Wymack sighed when Dan agreed.

“You’re kinda creepy when you dance,” Nicky told him. “I mean…I guess it works, or we could make it work, it’s just… sorta the way you move, I guess?”

“I could move differently.”

“No,” Dan said, “Don’t. Spooky works well with sexy. Sometimes.”

“We’re not going to talk about this first?” Wymack said.

“I like him,” Kevin repeated.

“I don’t,” Andrew interjected.

“I do,” Dan said.

“Same,” Nicky said after a short hesitation.

“Fine. You’re hired. But you follow the rules.”

Neil grinned. Wymack tried to give him a run down on what those rules were, but it was mostly stuff Neil already knew. Full shows on Friday and Saturday. Less labor intensive productions on shorter week nights. No soliciting inside the lounge.

“Wanna go out for pizza?” Nicky offered at the end of it.

“No,” Neil replied. He didn’t eat.

“Alright. Well, you want a ride home?”

Andrew was already leaving.

“No, thank you,” Neil said.

“Later.”

 

-0-

 

That night, Neil heard Seth choking in the bathroom.

It wasn’t the first time Seth had stayed late with a bottle and pills, usually starting in partway through fixing the sound system (which Neil would break, immediately). But he and Allison had been pretty off lately and Neil had been watching the combinations get less and less predictable, more pills and more bottles appearing.

Choking, though. Choking was a bad sign. Choking was a death sign.

Neil stepped through the wall and found Seth on his back, mouth filled with his own vomit. It made a gurgling sound, and... well, Neil didn’t really know what to do. He hadn’t had a body in a very long time, so he did the next best thing.

He pulled the fire alarm.

“Only one of us can haunt this place, that that’s me.” Neil told him above the blaring alarm.

Seth passed out.

 

-0-

 

After a night of ambulances and paramedics, he spent the day in a stupor. When the others started trickling in he retreated to the attic. Although he had wanted to make up the social slight of not going out for pizza, so they would not become suspicious, Neil couldn’t bring himself to materialize.

Not until Andrew began clunking through the house, a break from his usual habit of going outside in his free time. Neil didn't want to leave his attic, but something in Andrew's hard stare had begun worrying him. Hard stares were not often directed his way, and he had to nix whatever this was before it went any further.

He didn't know what Seth had said--if he'd told them that Neil had been there, or if Andrew was digging around for other reasons, but from what he'd seen Andrew would not take kindly to knowing Neil never really left.

Neil appeared, barely visible, hovering behind Andrew. He was with Nicky and Aaron—both of whom looked like they would rather be somewhere else. Aaron was bored. Nicky was nervous.

Neil could see why.

Andrew was stomping around, shuffling through Wymack’s office, through rooms, through the basement, looking at things left by old owners. He wouldn't find anything of interest. People moved in and then out again within days, and his father certainly hadn't left anything important.

“I mean, the place is definitely haunted,” Nicky was saying, “We all agree on that.”

“No, we don’t,” Aaron scoffed.

Aaron was technically a bartender, but he spent his entire shift waiting exclusively on the Vixens, so it wasn’t like Neil had ever said hello. Neil wondered if Aaron even knew he existed—even now, after he’d been hired.

“Um, the exploding light bulbs?”

“All the wiring in this place is shit—do you listen to Seth?”

“Exactly,” Nicky emphasized. “And all the missing stuff.”

“We moved. Wymack is stressed, Dan gets two hours of sleep.”

“I got locked in a room for 13 hours!”

“You’re an idiot!”

“The screaming?”

“Not screaming, creaking. The house is old.”

“Andrew! Are you hearing this?”

But neither Neil nor Andrew was paying attention. Andrew had started digging around by the back wall of the basement—and Neil decided he didn't like this. "Stop," he hissed.

"Did you hear that?" Nicky asked, nervous. Aaron rolled his eyes.

Andrew didn't look up from his prying. His hands were now running along the back wall, checking the bricks.

"What, like we're gonna find a secret passage?" Aaron asked, now sounding marginally interested.

"Think there’s mafia gold inside?" Nicky tried to sound light, but there were nerves in his voice.

Neil was beyond words. He was shaking. The house was shaking, and suddenly he was alone in the basement. He glared at the bricks.

"Stay where you are," he ordered, as if they could hear him.

 

-0-

 

That night, Neil got to dance.

It almost made up for the snooping.

 

-0-

 

Neil noticed that sometimes Andrew and Roland disappeared together.

He’d noticed it for a while, actually, but never paid it much mind. It didn’t matter where they went—except now that it did. What if they were snooping? What if there _was_ something to find?

This was an old house, a large house, and there were a lot of rooms that went unused. Some of them, Neil couldn’t remember the last time he’d been willing to enter. When he was alive? Before Patrick and Lola and the rest of them had started appearing to him, acting out the same scenes, again and again. Before Neil had realized it wasn’t them, not really, but still refused to enter those rooms again?

The one Andrew and Roland chose was his father’s study.

How could he have forgotten it?

Not that he really suspected his father of a messy exit, but when Neil was brave enough to pop in on them one day—expecting to find them rifling sneakily through old family secrets—he found that not all the rooms went quite unused as he thought.

Neil was lucky he was not visible to them—he wasn’t sure what his face looked like.

Roland was sprawled out on the floor, crop top pushed up well past the nipples, pants unzipped and pulled partially down his legs. Arms bound above his head to a desk leg, stretching and straining, and Andrew hovered above him….

Neil forgot to check for the false image of his father before he flashed out again.

 

-0-

 

Andrew didn’t stop. He kept prying, around every door, every corner, nothing in the house was off limits to him. All but the attic. Andrew pounded on the door after 2 weeks of continuous searching. Neil had been waiting for this, had been planning, but he still didn’t like it.

He had to give Andrew something, he knew that. Andrew was suspicious, and if he brought it up to Wymack… So he slowly relinquished control. The door swung open.

Andrew climbed up the ladder, his blond head appearing first.

“Hello,” Neil said, perching on a box behind him and trying to look calm.

Andrew wouldn’t have admitted it, but he almost looked startled. Then, his eyes moved around the attic.

“You _do_ live here.” He remarked flatly. It could’ve meant a lot of things. _‘You pulled the fire alarm on Seth.’ ‘You move things around.’ ‘You ripped up all our outfits when we started renovating.’_

“I’ve been here longer than you have,” Neil told him, a not so subtle challenge.

“And if real estate went by rules of seniority, I’m sure you’d have me beat. But it doesn’t.” Andrew pushed fully into the attic, but didn’t step off the ladder.

Neil didn’t say anything to that. He didn’t want to take it to threats—although, he would. If Andrew and Wymack pressed, he could make it so that they didn’t want to stay. But… _he_ wanted them to stay. So he remained silent.

“How long have you lived up here?”  Andrew asked.

Neil shrugged, “A while.”

“And no one’s caught on?”

“I mostly stay in the attic.”

“You’re an idiot,” Andrew finally decided. He descended the steps, and that was that.

 

-0-

 

When Seth came back to work, he and Allison made up—and then they fought, and then they made up again. Neil had to admit he was rather fascinated. For people who were so passionate about each other, they could be astoundingly mercurial.

Nicky and Aaron had set up an Xbox in one of the rooms, and they took to ordering pizza and chilling in there after shows. Nicky still invited Neil out, but Neil always said no. He thought this was an attempt at bonding.

“You know, it’s not like if you leave you’re going to be locked out,” Andrew told him once. But it didn’t feel like an encouragement, and after that he let it drop.

Seth sometimes joined them, occasionally raced Aaron, but mostly he was there to watch Neil. He’d been shifty ever since the overdose and Neil wondered just how much he remembered. He supposed it must’ve been something, to warrant suspicion, but not enough to act on.

After a few days, the scrutiny got the best of him, and Neil started messing with Seth. For the most part, he’d let off on the hardcore haunting, but Seth made it too easy.

One night, after Neil shorted out the stage lights during rehearsal, Seth exploded.

“It’s you!” he exclaimed. “I know it’s you—you little freak!”

“Seth,” Wymack cut in sharply.

“I’m not an idiot,” Seth was still focused solely on Neil. “The other’s might not see it, but I do!”

“What do you see?” Neil asked.

Seth blundered. “A liar! You aren’t who you say you are—you’ve been sabotaging me since you got here!”

“I have?” Neil asked.

“Seth!” Allison said.

“What, who even is this twerp? How do we know Riko isn’t paying him, it’s not like he wouldn’t.”

“Seth!” Wymack barked. “Enough.”

Riko’s name was like a rush of wind through the room, the entire atmosphere changed. Kevin stiffened, the others shifted nervously.

“How about instead of accusing the new kid, you do your damn job?” Nicky shot back.

Seth looked angry beyond words.

 

-0-

Dan and Matt brought the baby, sometimes.

Neil didn’t want to know its name, pinch its cheeks, watch as it saw everything for the first time.

Neil didn’t want to meet its eyes when it saw _him_ for the first time.

But they were wide, and Neil wanted to believe they were empty except that he felt suddenly caught. Like its eyes were just a film waiting to develop. Like he would actually show up in the picture.

Neil slipped from the room.

 

-0-

 

Neil never left the house, but he could look out into the small parking lot.

Shadows flitted around the streetlight, racing the cars on the highway. Andrew sat on the hood of his car and watched them go by. It had been a long time since Neil had felt the cold, but he could imagine it. The night air snuck under Andrew’s shirt and into his boots, and then into his bones, but he didn’t move. He did this most nights, after the show was over and the others had filed into the pizza joint down the street. Sometimes, Renee joined him, and they just sat.

It was what he’d done the first night, the night after Wymack had signed the papers.

Andrew didn’t really believe in ghosts, but he wasn’t committed to that belief. Neil had seen more than one side eye in the weeks before Neil had decided to let them stay, as he toppled their boxes and frayed their wires and undid their hard work.

He could believe, given the right sort of push.

In and amongst those thoughts, were flashbacks to when he’d walked in on Andrew and Roland. He hadn’t done it again, but sometimes when the two disappeared…he wasn’t tempted. Not exactly. He was sure he’d reached puberty when he was alive, and he supposed such activities should interest him, but he hadn’t had a physical form in a long time.

Neil didn’t know what to do with all the stray images. Especially the ones he’d never seen but, for some reason, could imagine.

A semi whizzed by and Andrew took another drag.

The shadows here liked to dance, curling around the trees and skittering across the ground. Cigarette smoke floated up and away, as tricky as the shadows, and then it was burned down.

Andrew dropped it to the ground, got in the car, and stepped on the gas.

If he noticed the eyes watching him leave, he didn’t look back.

 

-0-

 

“Poltergeists are never really gone—even when you exorcise them,” Nicky informed him on the day scary movies usurped Kevin’s preferred Exy and Aaron’s preferred racing games. It was all very informative.

“Unless you destroy the body,” Roland chipped in. “There’s always a body.”

Neil found sitting next to him on the couch easier than sitting next to Andrew on the beanbags. Even though Andrew had been fully clothed, and hardly the writhing mess that Roland had been, flashbacks of Roland didn’t sneak up on Neil as much.

“If I have to watch one more family get murdered by mysterious dark figures, I’m going to start killing people. Starting with Nicky.” Kevin declared.

“Yeah, ghosts look like the rest of us,” Roland declared, “Right Neil?”

“Mostly.”

Kevin bypassed the silence that took over the room at that by reaching for the remote and switching the channel.

“Thea Muldani,” Nicky told him. “Kevin’s girlfriend. Huge muscles. 10/10, would date if straight.” In a lower tone, “And the other one is Riko Moriyama. Also an ex. -10/10. Hate.”

Neil knew some, from past conversations. Riko was part of the reason the Foxes had had to relocate here. Something caught him off guard, however, “I’ve seen him,” Neil said.

“What,” Kevin started.

“He’s been to the club,” Neil clarified. “Once.”

“He. I,” Kevin collected himself. “What did he do?”

“Not much,” Neil shrugged. “He stayed in the back.”

This frustrated Kevin.

“What happened?” Neil wasn’t overly invested in the past, but he was interested in the answer.

“He was just…” Kevin trailed off. “We trained together. We were friends as kids, and we went to college together. We joined the Exy team…but Riko was just…” Kevin sighed. “Nothing was ever good enough for him.”

“When you fail someone…sometimes it brings out the worst in them,” Neil thought on it for a while. He didn’t know if he was talking about his father, or his mother; maybe both, in a way. “I know.”

Kevin sighed heavily. “I didn’t fail. I just…he just expected so much of me, and then he got so angry when I actually…did what he wanted me to do. Like he was…”

“Jealous?”

“Maybe,” Kevin shook his head.

“Then you leave,” that’s what Neil would have done. In the next moment, he realized they were big words coming from someone bound to a couple of square acres. Someone who hadn’t so much ‘left’ as…

“Leave? I did,” Kevin said with a broken voice. Then, angrier, “I did.”

 

-0-

 

Somewhere along the way, Andrew and Aaron got hassled into fixing the shower so the dancers wouldn’t have to walk home sweaty. Neil didn’t haunt them now, much, but it was just too good to pass up.

Neil leaned against the sink while Andrew and Aaron huddled over the drain, doing their best with their limited plumbing knowledge. The knobs squealed, the faucet shuddered and hit them full blast. Aaron jumped out of the tub, swearing, while Andrew swiped a hand at the knobs. They stuck for a moment before moving to the off position.

Andrew lifted his now sopping frame to stand nose to nose with Neil. “If you’re not going to help, then get out,” he jabbed a finger into Neil’s chest. Neil was lucky Andrew pulled away, then, because he could feel himself dematerializing.

As he exited into the hallway, Andrew called behind him, “Where do you keep the damn towels?”

“What the hell was that?” Aaron demanded, and Neil almost jumped. He’d forgotten Aaron was there.

_What the hell was that?_

 

-0-

 

“I want him to be my secretary,” Allison insisted.

“But Noir detective—” Dan started.

“Kevin has the dark and tormented thing cornered.” Allison said. “Neil, however, is a young and innocent piece of eye candy. _Perfect_. I have the choreography and everything.”

“And you would be…”

“The thick skinned police detective who moonlights as a dominatrix, and cannot help but feel drawn to her alluring bambi-eyed secretary.”

“Bambi?” Neil interjected.

“She’s saying you have deer eyes, big and naïve.” Renee said. Renee, much like Aaron, was not someone Neil had had much interaction with. Unlike Aaron, Renee made him nervous. Something in the way she… _saw_ when she looked at him. It was almost like Andrew, but at least when Andrew gave him a long look Neil could be relatively sure of Andrew’s maintained indifference. There was safety in that, which meant there was danger in Renee.

“I’m not naïve,” Neil said.

He’d been murdered at the age of 19, why did they think he would have trouble in an interoffice relationship? Much less one that involved the kind of whip Allison was now brandishing.

“We can’t do a Noir 40’s show without a movie starlet,” Dan protested.

“Nicky can be the starlet; he was practically born for that role.” Allison said, and Dan couldn’t help but agree with that. “Let Baby Neil and I do a duet.”

“He is very fresh faced,” Dan examined Neil with a critical eye.

“I prefer this to the mob boss idea,” Neil said. It had been a moment of panic, when Nicky had thrown it out. _No knives, no guns,_ Neil had said. And something in his voice had kept anyone from pushing it.

“Alright,” Dan leaned back. “Wow me.”

 

-0-

 

The next time Dan brought the baby, Neil let it see him.

He was in costume, and he tipped his hat, and he stayed put even when the baby blinked.

 

-0-

 

Neil had more or less forgotten what the name ‘Riko’ did to a room until Riko showed up.

It happened, sometimes. An audience member became enamored with one of the dancers. Everyone had their favorites. Neil, himself had been subject to such approaches, although Nicky had had to point it out to him.

This face caused a stir, though. No friendly refusals or teasing. Andrew actually came out from behind the bar and loomed over the lone figure at the table.

“Leave,” was what he said.

“No,” was how Riko had replied.

“I’m serious.”

“And I paid to be here,” Riko responded. “I want a drink. Bloody Mary.”

“Fuck you.”

“I tip,”

“Bottoms up,” Andrew said when he brought back the drink. Riko didn’t drink it, and Neil thought that wise. Roland had spit in it multiple times.

Kevin remained backstage for the majority of the show—Neil thought someone must’ve warned him.

Riko kept showing up.

It made Fridays tense—but there was a bonus, one he felt marginally guilty about. With Riko there, Seth’s vigilante vehemence was partially diverted to someone else. Neil hadn’t realized how tired he was getting of haunting just the one person.

But the reprieve couldn’t last forever. They got into such a schedule, dealing with Riko on Fridays, that no one realized when he showed up on a Sunday. He didn’t walk in, he waited until Kevin went out to the balcony.

Neil missed most of the conversation, but wandered out for the last of it.

“You could have been so much more!” Riko gestured.

“Fuck off it’s your fault I broke my hand!” His words were angry, but his voice was too shaky to carry any sort of command.

“Are you still on about that? I took you on a romantic skiing trip! How long are you going to blame me?”

“You’re always pushing me!” Kevin deflected.

“Because you could have been the best,” Riko said.

“No, _you_ were always the best,” Kevin was clutching the rail so hard his knuckles were white. “ _I_ was your sidekick, and you wouldn’t have it any other way!”

“We were equals.”

“Stop!” Kevin cried. “Stop lying to me!”

“You know what I’ve had to deal with since you left?” Riko demanded. They were going from subject to subject so fast it was making Neil’s head spin, but it was all connected for them, “Watching an Exy star join a small town burlesque troupe?”

“And they would’ve let alone by now if you’d just let it die!”

“ _I’m_ not the one keeping this going—”

“Bullshit!” Kevin exclaimed.

Neil had heard enough. He heard the door opening behind him, and before anyone could intervene he pushed. Riko tottered over the edge of the railing. Kevin cried out, reaching, but it was Andrew who stepped forward. He grabbed a hold of Riko’s collar right before the man would’ve tipped over the edge and held him there.

“Cut it out!” Riko ordered, his voice now a mirror of Kevin’s at the beginning of the conversation.

“Hm,” Andrew said.

Kevin stood to the side, petrified, not moving to help either party.

“I’ll have you arrested for assault!”

Andrew thought on this for a moment. “Ditto.”

“No,” Riko was panicking.

“Leave,” Andrew said. “I don’t like to repeat myself, but you’ve made me do it twice. I won’t be so nice the third time.”

“Fine!” Riko said. “Fine, just, just pull me up!”

Andrew, after a moment more of contemplation, did. Riko scrambled down the steps, pausing at the car door to look back at them. “I hope you’re happy with these freaks, Kevin! Because you’ll be stuck here until you die.”

Then, Riko was starting his shiny car and driving off.

Andrew herded a stunned Kevin indoors, but shot a look back around the balcony. For a heart pounding moment, Neil thought Andrew could see him, but then the moment passed and Andrew locked the door behind them.

 

-0-

 

Neil and Allison had worked out the dance well enough to get a round of applause, hoots, and hollers at the end of their set.

It started simple: Neil was in suspenders and a hat, much like something he might’ve worn back when he was alive. Allison took more liberties with her costume: The slowly unbuttoned blouse, the corset underneath, the high boots.

After that, at some point during rehearsal, Allison had deduced that Neil was not interested in women and/or a virgin.

“That’s alright,” she’d said, “We can work this.”

So, it was alright that Neil really didn’t know what to do with himself.

And later, he’d had Allison to tell him what to do.

It wasn’t until the third or fourth performance, when he wasn’t so focused on Allison and was able to take in more of the crowd, that he noticed Andrew watching.

Andrew watched him a lot.

But this felt like… _watching._

_Enjoying?_

 

-0-

 

One night, Andrew missed the glass as he was pouring vodka.

Neil had enough time to note it before Allison pinned him to the desk.

 

-0-

 

One night, Andrew didn’t look at him at all.

 

-0-

 

One night, Roland didn’t disappear with Andrew.

Roland winked at Neil.

Andrew reappeared at the beginning of Neil and Allison’s dance.

 

-0-

 

Sometimes, when Neil saw Wymack, he mistook him for his father, and all the lights in the room would blow out before Neil realized he was still the only real ghost in this house.

 

-0-

 

Neil realized the club was going to close.

He didn’t know how he was better at the math than Wymack, or maybe Wymack just wanted to keep crunching the numbers until they came out right, but the money just wasn’t there. The Foxes were out of options.

Well. Almost.

Neil procrastinated. Hemmed and hawed. Wondered if there was any other way to go about this, but in the end, he knew there wasn’t.

He dipped into his mother’s jewelry and pulled out the richest looking pieces. It was all there—his mother had left it when she’d left, and his father hadn’t bothered looking when he moved all her things to the attic.

Neil had, though. And he didn’t want to part with them. But his mother was gone, and the Foxes were here, and if he didn’t do this they would end up gone too. And hadn’t he already rejected them for real sequins, that first night he’d started ripping up her clothes and realizing it wasn’t enough?

So when Wymack called a group meeting, Neil brought something.

And when Wymack told them they didn’t have enough, Neil set it on the table.

And when Seth said, “What the fuck,” Neil disappeared.

 

-0-

 

“I fucking knew it!” Was Seth’s triumphant addendum.

 

-0-

 

Neil joined Andrew on the balcony for a smoke break while the others caused a commotion inside.

“You can’t haunt his place forever.”

“That’s the plan.”

“It’s a bad plan.”

“It’s worked so far.”

“Has it?”

“Of course,” Neil said.

Andrew waited a beat.

“What will you do when we all leave this place.”

“You have the money to stay, now.”

“When we age? Move on?”

It hadn’t occurred to Neil that the Foxes would ever leave.

“Did you think we’d all just stay? Haunt this place, like you?”

Yes.

“Where…where would you go?”

“There’s a world out there. You’re never going to see it.”

“I…” Neil trailed off. “No. I can’t leave.”

“Why can’t you leave.”

“I just…this is just where I am.”

“Neil.”

“No. It’s just. Where. I. Am.”

“What’s your real name?”

“My name is Neil.”

“Has it always been?”

“For as long as its mattered.”

“In the movies, there’s always a body.”

“Of course I had a body.”

“Where is it?”

“I don’t know. Buried. You stop caring about the sort of thing when you die.”

“Do you?”

Neil didn’t want to talk about this. He didn’t want to talk about any of this.

“You can’t do anything with it, you know. You can’t… you can’t … bring me back.”

“I don’t need to bring you back. You’re right here. I’m asking where your body is.”

“I told you. I don’t—”

“The police never found it.”

No. Neil didn’t want to talk about this.

“This is personal.”

Andrew didn’t blink. “Where’s your body, Neil.”

The house quivered.

“Your father said you disappeared, back in all those articles from the 30s. No one could prove anything. But we know what happened.”

“No.”

“Where’s your body.”

“Nowhere!”

A bulb shattered, but Andrew was done talking anyway. He wasn’t scared, just done. He waited.

Neil calmed down.

The house stopped shaking.

Somewhere inside, Seth was cussing up a lung.

Somewhere inside, a speaker was probably on fire.

Somewhere inside, there was a body.

 

-0-

 

Nicky was the one who pulled the bones from behind the bricked off room in the basement.

Neil didn’t want to watch, but he could feel it and it was like he couldn’t help but be there. He could feel his soul, tethered and bound and he’d always thought it was the house keeping him but it wasn’t.

He couldn’t stop seeing things. Snippets. Flashing images, he didn’t want. Scaring people. Getting rid of Lola. Of Patrick. Of hiding even though he knew in death there wasn’t much left his father could do to him. His father, leaving, never coming back, except in Neil’s head. Locking all those rooms. Forgetting all of those rooms.

This wasn’t something he wanted to deal with right now. It wasn’t something he wanted to deal with, ever.

But then Andrew was there, and Neil felt slightly more grounded, and then he was holding a skull—his cracked skull—and Nicky was saying something about zombies, and then Neil was alone with his bones in his attic.

It took Andrew a day to knock.

Neil allowed the door to open.

“Hey,” Neil greeted hollowly.

“When are you coming downstairs?”

“Maybe never.”

“That’s stupid,” Andrew told him. “You want to be stuck here forever?”

“I am stuck here forever.”

“Come haunt my apartment.”

“What?”

“You heard me.”

“But…I belong here,” Neil said, “not just with you. With everyone.”

“Then come downstairs.”

Neil said nothing.

“Nicky won’t stop bugging me. When Seth doesn’t have something to fix he just sits around being insufferable.”

Neil said nothing.

Andrew looked at him, a hard look, then stole a femur.

“Hey!” Neil said, but Andrew was already at the bottom of the ladder, and then at the doorway, and then he was out in the yard and Neil had followed him.

Neil was squinting into the sun, so he didn’t see if Andrew’s face was smug when he said, “So, that proves that.”

There wasn’t much Neil could do to stop them from moving his bones, after that. He didn’t try. They kept some in the house, Nicky planted one in the pizza parlor down the street. Kevin took one to his therapist’s office (subtle) and Dan buried one in the cemetery.

“Just in case you ever want to find peace,” she said.

It took a while for Neil to materialize in Andrew’s apartment.

When he finally did, it was strange. Ice cream containers stacked by the filled up trash can, bean bags on the floor, clothes hanging over the couch. It reminded Neil of his attic—cluttered, but barely lived in.

“So. You live here.”

“You could too,” Andrew said.

“No, I couldn’t.”

“Bonehead.”

“Haha.”

“So?”

Neil considered.

“You invited us into your home. I invite you into mine.” Andrew didn’t mince words.

Neil realized, he _wanted_ this.

 

-0-

 

Slowly, slowly, some of the images of Lola and the others around the house faded. Time never felt concrete to Neil, sometimes he…slipped back. He kept most rooms locked, for now.

But, for the first time, he danced.

**Author's Note:**

> Edit: 10/28/18 I realized I just never mentioned the baby again after Dan had it, so its in there now haha


End file.
